Joel Brinkley: Candidates have de-emphasized foreign affairs

September 11, 2012|American Voices | Tribune Media Services

Foreign affairs have fallen off the map for both major presidential candidates. Their convention speeches made that clear, even though our relations with the rest of the world have a direct, undeniable bearing on the economic issues that both candidates have placed at the center of their campaigns.

There can be no greater example of that indifference than the Democrats' failure to note in their platform that the party recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital. For decades, that assertion has been boilerplate for both parties and shouldn't be controversial. Most every agency of Israel's government, including the parliament and the prime minister's office, has been in West Jerusalem since the nation's founding.

No one but Islamic extremists argues that West Jerusalem is not a part of Israel. It's on the Israeli side of the green line that divided the territory in 1949 following the Arab-Israeli War. So dropping this reference was clumsy and careless. It enabled the Republicans to promote their argument that Obama is no friend of Israel. So, embarrassed Democrats reversed themselves and put the language back.

That position doesn't cost the nation any money, of course, but so many other foreign issues do, particularly Afghanistan. Well, Mitt Romney famously failed even to mention Afghanistan during his acceptance speech -- to his own peril. At least three American and NATO troops were killed during the convention, and every time a soldier dies his hometown paper carries a story, most often on page one.

"A 23-year-old soldier from Oberlin died Wednesday" after being injured "while on duty in Kandahar, Afghanistan," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on its front page Aug. 24. The Plain Dealer is Ohio's highest-circulation newspaper. And isn't Ohio one of the most important states in play?

As he has on so many things, Romney flip-flopped on Afghanistan. He once called Obama "naive" for pulling troops out of Afghanistan. But when he saw that the vast majority of Americans, even most Republicans, want the war to end, he suddenly changed his mind.

What's this have to do with the economy? The U.S. has spent more than $2 trillion on the Afghan war, and the Pentagon continues to spend about $320 million there every single day -- even though that war is already lost. If Romney is so interested in reducing the deficit, why didn't he even mention this?

In his own speech, President Obama boasted: "We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014 our longest war will be over."

Not so. Under Obama's plan, even after 2014 the U.S. will maintain roughly 10,000 to 15,000 troops there indefinitely, at a continuing cost of uncounted billions. And since the Pentagon acknowledges that Afghan soldiers are incapable of fighting on their own, we may still see American fatalities.

As for blunting the Taliban's momentum, every expert I have spoken to tells me the insurgents are simply in waiting across the border in Pakistan until most foreign troops leave. Even so, some of them are still terrorizing Afghan civilians. A few days before Obama spoke, Taliban insurgents beheaded 17 Afghans because they dared to put on a party -- with music.

Think about the other foreign issues that cost America big money, like the European debt crisis. As Europe's economy continues to teeter, Europeans are importing far fewer American goods. Normally, Europeans buy almost $400 billion in American products and services each year.

Want to get the American economy working again? Find a way to help the Europeans. Admittedly, that's not easy. When Obama suggested they should stimulate their economies rather than continuing to insist on austerity, the Germans rebuked him.

Well, Romney didn't mention Europe, either.

"Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving," he did say. How about striving to help Europe -- or China, America's largest trading partner, whose economy is flailing, too.

Last year the United States exported goods worth $104 billion to China. But with China's economy in deep trouble, those exports are certain to decline in the months ahead.

With Obama, at least we know his foreign affairs policies, whether or not you like them. But Romney is hypocritical or deliberately vague. And every time he steps into this arena, he blunders. During his recent foreign trip, he insulted the British and then the Palestinians. Then, in Poland, he enthusiastically extolled the European system -- even though earlier he had bitterly accused Obama of trying "to turn America into a European-style entitlement society."

Is this who we want at our foreign policy helm?

(Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.)